This essay focuses on two historical maps as rhetorical artifacts: The Piri Reis Map of 1513 produced by the Turkish admiral Piri Reis in 1513, the Reis map, and the Map of the Island of Cuba and Surrounding Territories produced by the Cuban geographer, historian, and educator José María de la Torre y de la Torre in 1841, the de la Torre map. The Reis map demonstrates the colonial logic of Americas’ cartographic invention while the de la Torre Map is an alternative cartographic artifact disrupting the Reis map’s celebratory discourse and the settler-colonial legacy of the world heritage memory.

This article focuses on the lived experiences of multilingual writing teachers and presents what we, the authors, call “A Rhetoric of Accent Fear,” which introduces accent fear as a form of linguistic racism. Through this framework, we reflect on our stories of accent fear as multilingual writing teachers; we practice forming relational connections across our experiences; and we use this relational connection to offer strategies for other multilingual rhetoric and writing scholars and teachers to navigate these sites of tension and in turn, challenge students’ accent fears.